


Promises

by combefemme



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, M/M, Set during Volume 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-18 23:38:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1447135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/combefemme/pseuds/combefemme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moment between Kate and Billy after Mother takes Teddy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises

Kate finds Billy on the bridge. He's leaning over one of the chairs, gripping the back so tightly his knuckles are white. She leans her back against the seat next to him and crosses her arms.

"I think America and Loki are planning something," she tells him. "Do you ever get the feeling they always know more than they're letting on?"

Billy doesn't say anything. He doesn't even look at her.

Kate bites the inside of her lip and tries again, "How are you holding up, Billy?"

He turns to her then, tears in his eyes. "Who else do we have to lose, Kate?"

Something constricts in Kate's chest and her throat tightens. She squeezes her eyes shut and turns away, finally thinking about all the things she's been avoiding thinking about for the past year. Eli walking away. Nate tearing Jonas apart. Cassie's body, broken and lifeless. And Tommy, screaming in fear or pain or both, reflected in the eyes of the PatriNOT.

Kate takes a deep breath, steeling herself, before turning back to Billy. She takes his hand and squeezes it.

"Not Teddy," she says -- promises, even though she has no right to. "And not --" she swallows and blinks the image of Tommy from her mind "-- and not Tommy."

Her voice breaks on the name and Billy gives her an odd look, his eyebrows pinching in. He turns toward the front of the ship and Kate follows his gaze. Noh-Varr is leaning over the console, pushing buttons and not paying them any mind. When Billy looks back at her there's a new kind of understanding in his eyes.

"Don't say it," Kate says -- pleads, really.

It's something else she's been avoiding thinking about. Her new found attraction to boys with white hair and charming smiles and an affinity for the colour green. And, okay, maybe it's not all that new.

And if Kate is being honest with herself -- really honest -- which is something else she tends to avoid, she has to admit that that was what drew her to Noh-Varr in the first place. She'd been out at a bar and he'd been sweet to her. And in the darkness of his room after a couple of cocktails it had been easy to pretend. It had been easy to pretend that the white hair she threaded her fingers through belonged to someone else. It had been easy to pretend that the lips at her neck could move a thousand miles a minute.

She felt guilty about it now, of course. It hadn't mattered much when Noh-Varr had just been a one night stand, but in the past few months when they'd been running and fighting together she had grown to genuinely care about him. He may not excite her the way Tommy does, but he also doesn't make her angry the way Eli did. Maybe that's enough. Maybe she can really have something with Noh-Varr. Maybe she already does.

And it's not like it could ever work out between her and Tommy, anyway. Kate may never be the soccer-mom-house-in-the-suburbs kind of girl, but even she needs more stability than Tommy Shepherd can offer.

Of course, if that's true -- if that's what she really believes -- it doesn't explain the ache she gets in her chest whenever she thinks about the possibility of never seeing Tommy again and getting to find out for sure.

Billy squeezes her hand then, bringing her attention back to him. There's something determined in his eyes now.

"We'll get them back," he promises, even though he has no right to.

She smiles, just a little bit, and repeats it, "We'll get them back."


End file.
